Woman of letters

Ann Landers has her say in Stormfield’s ’Answers’

Posted

Dear Ann Landers: I dare you to print this.

I’ve been reading your column for years, and I never dreamed I’d be writing to you. But here in Lansing, a local theater is about to expose all your secrets. The play is called “The Lady With All the Answers,” and the actress portraying you is Diane Dorsey, who comes from Chicago (isn’t that your neck of the woods?). Now there’s something that’ll twirl your turban!

By the way, according to what I’ve heard, Ann Landers isn’t even your real name. Didn’t a little bird tell me that you were actually born Esther Pauline Friedman, and that Ann Landers was already an established columnist long before you came along?  Wake up and smell the coffee!

— Concerned in the Capital City 

Dear Concerned:

That little bird was no cuckoo. Yes, there was an Ann Landers long before Esther Pauline Friedman, a.k.a. Eppie Lederer, came along.

According to Kristine Thatcher, who’s directing the Stormfield Theatre’s “Answers,” the woman whose advice and opinions would eventually be heard worldwide only got her job by being in the right place at the perfect time. 

Lederer, whom Thatcher describes as "a political mover and shaker," applied to the Chicago Sun-Times, hoping to busy herself helping sort mail for columnist Ann Landers.

“And she found out that the original Ann Landers — a woman named Ruth Crowley — had died recently,” Thatcher said.

“It was fate,” Dorsey concluded.

During a break in afternoon rehearsals for the one-woman show, Thatcher and Dorsey eagerly shared their wealth of Landers trivia. They’ve read “America’s Mom: The Life, Lessons and Legacy of Ann Landers,” written by her former editor Rick Kogan and they’ve studied the video they can find of her.

Thatcher has her own Landers connection. “I met her when I was doing ‘The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby’ in Chicago,” she said. “She was part of the audience, and at the beginning of the show we wandered around and handed out muffins to audience members. And I got to hand a muffin to Ann Landers.”

Both star and director agree this was a woman who broke taboos and started conversations about topics that many only whispered about: cancer, homosexuality, trouble in the bedroom — and, of course, the proper way to hang a toilet paper roll.

“She calls herself a Jewish Joan of Arc in the play,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey has a different term for her: “I’d say she was a good, solid broad with style,” said the actress, with a smile.

Written by David Rambo, “Answers” finds Landers in her office one evening in 1975, just as she is about to type “the most important column of my career.” It addresses a problem that perplexes even Landers, who confesses, “The lady with all the answers doesn’t have the answer to this one.”

Before she reveals her secret pain, Landers takes time to reflect on what has brought her to this point. She shares letters and a few secrets, including startling details of her trip to Vietnam in 1967 to visit American soldiers in the field hospitals. “This bouffant made it through two weeks of the Vietnam War intact,” she proudly notes of her celebrated coiffure.

Beneath that puffy hairdo was a sharp mind and, at times, a sharp tongue, too. In a 1991 column, Landers was challenged by “J.N. in Middlesex, Mass.,” who complained about “the trash who crank out one kid after another, those freeloaders who sponge off hard-working people like me.”

But J.N. took it a step too far when he wrote: “Say what you like about Nazi Germany, Miss Landers, but those people had character. They honored the work ethic and knew what it was to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Over the entrance to Nazi concentration camps was the slogan in German that read, ‘Work makes you free,’ a concept we have lost in America.” (And yes, he signed his letter “I dare you to print this.”)

Landers was in a lather. “Just when I think I’ve read everything, I get a letter from a self-righteous jackass, spouting off about the work ethic and quoting, of all things, a slogan over the entrance of a Nazi concentration camp. It’s useless to try to talk sense to people like you so I won’t try.”

That fiery side doesn’t surprise Thatcher. “She could let certain people have it, and she does in the play.”

Yet she was also open-minded enough to reconsider some of her positions and to correct herself when necessary. “She realized she made mistakes,” Dorsey said. “And she did: She once called the Pope a Pollock — in Chicago, which has the largest Polish community outside of Warsaw! And she apologized for that.

“She was anti-abortion, but she changed her mind. She was one of the first people to write about homosexuality. In one of her columns she wrote, ‘Homosexuals are born, not made. I didn’t always believe that.’ She grew from her conversations with her readers, and it seems like the things she talked about in 1975 are still pertinent today.”

However, there are still a few things that won’t be revealed in “Answers.”

“She did like to write from her bathtub; it was her favorite place to work,” Dorsey said. But don’t expect to catch a glimpse of Ann au naturel.

“It’s backstage,” Dorsey joked of the tub. “I soak before I come on.”


‘The Lady With All the Answers’
Stormfield Theatre,
201 Morgan Lane, Lansing
Through June 5
7 p.m. Wednesday, May 18 (“Pay What You Can” preview performance); 7 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
$18 Thursdays; $24 Fridays and Saturdays; $20 Sundays; seniors $2 off; $10 students with ID for all shows
Cash or check at the door one hour before showtime, or buy online at www.lansingarts.org


Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here




Connect with us